Dutt, Beyond the Theatrics

Utpal Dutt

On the Theatre

Publisher: Seagull Books, Calcutta

Printing Years: 2009, 2022

ISBN: 978-8-1-7046-251-4

Price: 499/-

Pages: 201

As I read the book I recalled watching him as Dhurandhar Bhatawdekar – a few years ago, 

Few questions also came up,

• How well read was he? How the hell did he manage to recall so much!
• How did he see where we were headed? Was he that ahead of his times? 
• How could he have been such direct, frank and yet so popular?
• How broad and deep was his repertoire?

But then he was at best an enigma - someone who worked closely with Ghose, Sen and Ray, was a Shakespeare scholar, and yet known to many of his generation for his roles as a 'comedian' in Hindi cinema! Dhurandhar Bhatawdekar was just one of the many such roles. 

Some lines from the book – that have stayed,

On Shakespeare

• Urdu alone, of all Indian languages, can capture fully the sound-quality of Shakespeare’s verse.
• The decline of interest in Shakespeare in our times has been brought about by the attempt to restrict him to the confines of the leisured class.
• Shakespeare’s literary supremacy is apparent to anyone who appreciates literature as a law of nature.

On poetry

• An actor who does not love poetry is a contradiction in terms.
• The bourgeois does not understand poetry and is therefore suspicious of it.

On tradition

• The greatest experiment consists in carrying forward tradition, not in denying it; in interpreting and moulding it for our epoch, not in rejecting it as old.
• An experiment that denies its own past is bound to be still-born; Bertolt Brecht used to say that an experiment means understanding tradition and then bringing it forward to our age.

On truth

• We do not believe in absolute truth at all. Truth is always class truth. There are always two truths involved in every issue; the truth of the bourgeoisie and the truth of the proletariat.
• Gorky and Brecht insist that our truth embraces not only what is but what will be, or should be.

On Man

• A man lives by his head, but his head will not suffice. Just take a look at your own heads, at most supporting lice.
• When hysteria rules, disagreement automatically means that the person involved is a scoundrel.
• Man is a history of changing social relations.